The male calyx is quinquepartite; there is no corolla: the female calyx is quadrifid: no corolla; there are four styles, and one seed within the indurated calyx. There are only two species: 1. S. fera, wild spinage, produces its fruit on footstalks. 2. S. oleracea, common spinage, has sessile fruits and sagitated leaves. It has been cultivated in Britain since 1568, but it is not known from what country it was originally brought. When intended for winter use, it should be sown on an open spot of ground in the end of July; and if possible when the weather is rainy. When the young plants are come up, the weeds must be destroyed, and the plants left at about five inches asunder. The ground being kept clear of weeds, the spinage will be fit for use in October. The way of gathering it to advantage is only to take off the longest leaves, leaving those in the centre to grow bigger; and at this rate a bed of spinage will furnish the table for a whole winter, till the spinage sown in spring is become fit for use, which is commonly in April.

SPINE, in botany, thorns, rigid prickles: a species of arma, growing on various parts of certain plants for their defence; spinæ ramorum arcent pecora. On the branches we find examples in the pyrus, prunus, citrus, hippophaes, gmelina, rhamnus, lycium, &c.; on the leaves in the aloe, agave, yucca, ilex, hippomane, theophrasta, carlina, &c.; on the calyx, in the carduus, cnicus, centauria, molucella, galeopsis, &c.; on the fruit, in the trapa, tribulus, murex, spinacia, agremonia, datura, &c.

SPINAGE. See SPINACH and SPINACIA. SPINAL, adj. Lat. spina. Belonging to SPINE, n. s. the backbone: the backbone. All spinal, or such as have no ribs, but only a backbone, are somewhat analogous thereto. Browne's Vulgar Errours.

There are who think the marrow of a man, Which in the spine, while he was living ran; When dead, the pith corrupted will become A snake, and hiss within the hollow tomb. Dryden. Descending careless from his couch, the fall Luxed his joint neck, and spinal marrow bruised.

Philips. Those solids are entirely nervous, and proceed from the brain and spinal marrow, which, by their bulk, appear sufficient to furnish all the stamina or threads of the solid parts.

Arbuthnot.

The rapier entered his right side, reaching within a finger's breadth of the spine. Wiseman's Surgery. SPINAL MARROW, SPINAL NERVES. See ANATOMY, Index.

SPINALIS, in anatomy, several muscles, &c. of the spine. See ANATOMY.

SPINCKES (Nathanael), an eminent nonjurant divine, born in 1654, at Castor n Northamptonshire, where his father Edmund, a native of New England, and a man of letters, was rector. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1669-70. In 1671 he fell heir, by his father's death, to a large fortune and a fine library. After taking his degrees of B. and M. A., &c., he was admitted priest, December 22d, 1678. He then became chaplain to Sir R. Edgcomb; and in 1681 the same to the duke of Lauderdale. In 1685 he was made rector of Peakirk in Nor

thamptonshire, where he married Miss Rutland of London. In 1687 he was made a prebendary of Salisbury, rector of St. Mary, and preacher at Stratford at £80 a year. But in 1690 he lost all his preferments, by refusing to take the oaths to William and Mary. On the 3d of June 1713 he was made a bishop. He died 28th of July, 1727. His publications were numerous. The most celebrated is his Sick Man Visited.

SPINDLE, in geometry, a solid body generated by the revolution of some curve line about its base or double ordinate; in opposition to a conoid, which is generated by the rotation of the curve about its axis or absciss, perpendicular to its ordinate. The spindle is denominated circular, elliptic, hyperbolic, or parabolic, &c., according to the figure of its generating curve.

SPINDLE, in mechanics, sometimes denotes the axis of a wheel, or roller, &c., and its ends are the pivots.

SPINE. See ANATOMY, Index.
SPINE, in botany. See SPINE.

SPINEL, in mineralogy, a sub-species of octohedral corundum. Color red. Occurs in grains, more frequently crystallised; in a perfect octohedron, which is the fundamental figure; in a tetrahedron, perfect or modified; a thick equiangular six-sided table; a very oblique foursided table; a rhomboidal dodecahedron; a rectangular four-sided prism. Splendent and vitreous. Cleavage fourfold. Fracture flat conchoidal. Translucent to transparent. Refracts single. Scratches topaz, but is scratched by sapphire. Brittle. Specific gravity 3-5 to 3.8. Fusible with borax. Its constituents are, alumina 82-47, magnesia 8.78, chromic acid 6-18, loss 2.57.-Vauquelin. It is found in the gneiss limestone; in the kingdom of Pegu; and in district of Acker in Sudermannland, in a primitive Ceylon. It is used as a precious stone. When it weighs four carats (about sixteen grains) it is considered of equal value with a diamond of half the weight.-Jameson.

SPINEL, in the linen manufactory, four hanks. SPINELLANE. Color plum-blue. It occurs crystallised in rhomboids of 117° 23′, and 62° 37'; and in six-sided prisms acuminated with three planes. It scratches glass. It is found on the shores of the lake of Laach, in a rock composed of glassy felspar, quartz, hornblende, &c. It is said to be a variety of Hauyne.

SPINELLO (Aretino), a Tuscan painter, o great repute in his time. He was born in 1328, and studied under James di Casentino, whom at twenty he excelled. He painted history and portraits admirably, and finished the pieces exquisitely at last. But he painted a picture of the fallen angels, in which he drew so horrid a picture of Lucifer that it frightened him so much as to affect his senses ever after. He died in 1420.

SPINELLO (Paris), the son and disciple of Aretino, was also an eminent painter. His style greatly resembled that of his father, whom he did not long survive, dying in 1422.

SPINESCENT, sharp and pricking. SPIN'ET, n. s. Fr. espinette. A small harpsichord; an instrument with keys.

When miss delights in her spinnet, A fiddler may his fortune get.

Suift.

SPINET, OF SPINNET, a musical instrument ranked in the second or third place among harmonious instruments. It consists of a chest or belly made of the most porous and resinous wood to be found, and a table of fir glued on slips of wood called summers, which bear on the sides. On the table is raised two little prominences or bridges, wherein are placed so many pins as there are chords or strings to the instrument. It is played on by two ranges of continued keys, the former range being the order of the diatonic scale, and that behind the order of the artificial notes or semitones. The keys are so many flat pieces of wood, which, touched and pressed down at the end, make the other raise a jack which strike and sound the strings by means of the end of a crow's quill, wherewith it is armed. The first thirty strings are of brass, the other more delicate cnes of steel or iron wire; they are all stretched over the two bridges already mentioned. The figure of the spinet is a long square or parallelogram: some call it a harp couched, and the harp an inverted spinet. See HARP. This instrument is generally tuned by the ear; which method of the practical musicians is founded on a supposition that the ear is a perfect judge of an octave and a fifth. The general rule is to begin at a certain note, as C, taken towards the middle of the instrument, and turning all the octaves up and down, and also the fifths, reckoning seven semitones to each fifth, by which means the whole is tuned. Sometimes to the common or fundamental play of the spinet is added another similar one in unison, and a third in octave to the first, to make the harmony the fuller; they are either played separately or together by means of a stop; these are called double or triple spinets; sometimes a play of violins is added, by means of a bow, or a few wheels parallel to the keys, which press the strings and make the sound last as long as the musician pleases, and heighten and soften them more or less, as they are more or less pressed. The harpsichord is a kind of spinet, only with another disposition of the keys. See HARPSICHORD. The instrument takes its name from the small quill ends which touch the strings, resembling spinæ or thorns.

SPINIFEX, in botany, a genus of plants belonging to the class of polygamia and order of monccia. The hermaphrodite flowers have a calyx with bivalved biflorus glumes, the valvelets being parallel to the rachis; the corolla is bivalved and awnless; there are three stamina and two styles. In the male flowers the calyx is common with the hermaphrodite; the corolla and stamina are similar. There is only one species; viz. S. squarrosus.

SPINK, n. s. Scot. spink. A finch; a bird. Want sharpens poesy, and grief adorns ; The spink chaunts sweetest in a hedge of thorns.

Harte.

SPINNING (from spin), in commerce, the act or art of reducing silk, flax, hemp, wool, hair, or other matters, into thread. Spinning is either performed on the wheel, or with a distaff and spindle, or with other machines proper for the several kinds of working. Hemp, flax, nettle

thread, and other like vegetable matters, are to be wetted in spinning; silks, wools, &c., are spun dry, and do not need water; yet there is a way of spinning or reeling silk as it comes off the cases or balls where hot and even boiling water is to be used. See SILK. The vast variety and the importance of those branches of our manufactures which are produced from cotton, wool, and flax, spun into yarn, together with the cheapness of provisions and the low price of labor in foreign countries, which are our rivals in trade, have occasioned many attempts at home to render spinning more easy, cheap, and expeditious. For which see COTTON. These contrivances have in some parts of Scotland been applied to the spinning of flax.

The ancient Greeks entertained so high an opinion of the utility and benefits of spinning and making cloth, that they ascribed the invention to Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. But we, who profess to be Christians, ought to trace the origin of the arts to persons who really existed, and not to the imaginary gods and goddesses of the Greeks. Moses, while he informs us that music and metallurgy were invented by the descendants of Cain before the flood, mentions also that Jabel was the father or instructor of such as dwell in tents. Hence it is evident that spinning, weaving, and cloth-making, must have been invented about or before the same period, and probably by the same person. But to descend to our own times we do not know, except perhaps the steam-engine, any mechanical invention that has made such amazing addition to the activity, industry, and opulence of this island, as the invention of Sir Richard Arkwright for spinning by water, where dead matter is made to perform all that the nicest fingers can do when directed by the never ceasing attention of the intelligent eye. We know not to what benefactor we owe the fly-wheel. Sir Richard has the honor of combining this with the spindle and distaff. To give an intelligible and accurate dedescription of a cotton mill would require a volume. But in our article COTTON will be found a complete account of the modern furniture of this most important manufactory.

Worsted is spun in a frame resembling the water-frame of Arkwright, from which it only differs in the relative distances of the rollers, by which the drawing out or extending of the fibres is effected.

In 1806 Messrs. Clarke and Bugby obtained a patent for improvements in a machine for spinning hemp and flax, which is intended to be worked by hand labor, and to be at such a small expense as to bring it within the reach of small manufacturers. The inventors state it to be constructed upon such safe and easy principles, that no length of experience is necessary to en able children to work it; and that it occupies so little space that the machines may be placed in small rooms, out-buildings, or other cheap places. To effect the above purposes it was necessary to get rid of the flyer fixed upon the spindle used in the old machinery for spinning hemp or flax, which additions require a power in proportion of five to one; and also to surmount the difficulty which arises from the want of elasticity in these

substances, and which prevents them from being spun by stretching out at the same time that the thread is twisted, in the manner of the mule or jenny. These patentees recommend a machine which is in fact a mule with certain modifications; and, to give the effect of elasticity in the fibres, they have two methods. The most simple, and that which they particularly recommend, is to provide a holder of large wire for every spindle, which holders are several inches in length, fixed in an arbor or shaft that extends from one end of the carriage to the other.

This arbor or shaft, with the holders, may be considered as an enlarged and improved substitute for what is called the faller in the mules or jennies for spinning cotton, and the wire-holders fixed therein have elliptical eyes at their extremities, through each of which a thread is conducted in its passage from the rollers which draw out the thread to its spindle. The wire of which the holder is made, after forming the elliptical eye, is left or extended beyond the uppermost part something in the manner of a corkscrew, so that the yarn may be conveniently slipped in when occasion may require it. These holders for each thread are for the purpose of keeping the yarn in a state nearly vertical over the tops of the spindle, when the carriage which contains them is coming out; and, as they will readily yield or spring from the vertical position, they have the same effect as elasticity in the fibres of the substance which is to be stretched out; but the wires being removed from the vertical situation at the beginning of the return of the carriage, and thrown into nearly an horizontal position, by inclining the shaft into which they are all fixed, they bring the yarn below the tops of the bobbins or quills which are fixed upon the spindles, which will then wind up the threads upon them when the spindles are turned round, and then the wire-eyes being regularly curved, and raised up again by the motion of an elliptic wheel which is turned round by the machine, they distribute the yarn regularly upon the bobbins or quills, and prevent it from hinkling and improperly doubling or twisting together. Another method of compensating for the want of elasticity in hemp and flax is to fix a round bar of wood, about an inch and a half in diameter, the whole length of the carriage, about three or four inches above the tops of the spindles, so that the outer surface, or that next the person who works the machine, may be perpendicular, or nearly so, over the tops of the spindles, the inner side having pieces of wood or metal fixed or nailed thereto, leaving only small spaces or notches between each for the yarn to pass through. The use of these pieces is to prevent the threads from getting together and entangling. Every thing relating to the wire holders before mentioned, and the arbor to which they are affixed, must be applied in concert with these pieces of metal, which form a separation between the threads.

M. Reaumur has shown, by a series of curious experiments, that the common mussel, and some other shell-fish of the sea, possess the art of spinning in a great degree of perfection. But he observes that, though the workmanship is the

same, the manner of producing it is very different. Spiders, caterpillars, and the like, make threads of any length that they please by making the viscous liquor, of which they are formed, pass through a fine perforation in the organ appointed for this spinning: but the way in which the mussels form their threads is very different, as the former resembles the work of the wire-drawer, so does this that of the founder, who casts metals in a mould. The canal of the organ destined for the mussel's spinning, which, from its shape, is commonly called its tongue, is the mould in which its thread is cast, and gives it its determinate length.-Mem. Acad. Par. 1711.

The SPINNING-WHEEL, in rope-making, for twelve spinners, is about five feet in diameter, and is hung between two posts fixed in the ground: on its top is fixed a semi-circular frame called the head, which contains twelve whirls that turn on iron spindles, with hooks to their front ends to hang the hemp on, and are worked by means of a leather band encircling the wheel and whirls. The whirls are made to run with a truer motion when the head on the rising side of the band has a larger segment of a circle than the falling side; or, in other words, let the base part of the head be longer from the middle than the opposite or falling side, by which means the band will be kept equally tight over the whirls, and consequently the motion be alike to all. N. B. Heads made in this manner have always the wheel turned the same way. SPINOSITY, n. s.

Lat. spinosus. Crabbedness; thorny or briary perplexity. The first attempts are always imperfect; much more in so difficult and spiny an affair as so nice a subject. Digby. Philosophy consisted of nought but dry spinosities, lean notions and endless altercations about things of nothing.

Glanville.

SPINOSUM FOLIUM, a spinous leaf, indicates the margin running out into rigid points or prickles, quod margine exit in acumina duriora, rigida, pungentia.

SPINOSUS CAULIS. See BOTANY, Glossary.
SPINOUS, in botany. See SPINOSUS.

SPINOUS FISHES, such as have some of the rays of the back fins running out into thorns or prickles, as the perch, &c.

SPINOZA (Benedict), was born at Amsterdam the 24th of November 1632. His father was a Jew of Portugal, by profession a merchant. After being taught Latin, by a physician, he st died theology, and afterwards devoted himself to philosophy. He began very early to be dissatisfied with the Jewish religion; and, as his temper was open, he did not conceal his doubts from the synagogue. The Jews, it is said, offered to tolerate his infidelity, and even promised him a pension of 1000 dollars a year, if he would remain in their society, and continue outwardly to practise their ceremonies. But, if this offer was really made, he rejected it, from his aversion to hypocrisy, or because he could not endure the restraint which it would have imposed. He also refused the legacy of a very considerable fortune, to the prejudice of the natural heirs; and he learned the art of polishing glass for spectacles, that he might subsist independently of every one.

An

accident hastened his leaving the synagogue. As he was returning home one evening from the theatre, he was stabbed by a Jew; the wound was slight; but the attempt led Spinoza to conclude that the Jews had formed the design of assassinating him. He then became a Christian, and frequented the churches of the Lutherans and Calvinists. He now devoted himself more than ever to his philosophical speculations; and, being often interrupted by his friends, he left Amsterdam, and settled at the Hague, where he sometimes continued for months together without ever stirring from his lodging. His Tractatus Theologico Politicus was published about this time, a book containing all those doctrines in embryo, which were afterwards unfolded in his Opera Posthuma, and which are generally considered as a system of atheism. His fame, which had now spread far and wide, obliged him sometimes to interrupt his philosophical reveries. Learned men visited him from all quarters. While the prince of Condé commanded the French army, in Utrecht, he entreated Spinoza to visit him; and, though he was absent when the philosopher arrived, he returned immediately, and spent a considerable time with him. The elector Palatine offered to make Spinoza professor of philosophy at Heidelberg; but this he declined. He died of a consumption at the Hague on the 21st of February 1677, aged forty-five. His life was a perpetual contradiction to his opinions. He was temperate, liberal, and remarkably disinterested; he was sociable, affable, and friendly. His conversation was agreeable and instructive, and never deviated from the strictest propriety. In the Tractatus Theologico Politicus, he treats of prophecy and prophets; and of the call of the Hebrews, whom he affirms to have been distinguished from other nations only by the admirable form of their government. He is likewise of opinion, or pretends to be so, that God may, in a supernatural way, have given political institutes to other nations as well as to the Hebrews. For, according to him, every nation was blessed with the light of prophecy. That light indeed, if his notions of it be just, was of very little value. He labors to prove that the prophets were distinguished from other men only by their piety and virtue; and that their writings are valuable to us only for the excellent rules they contain respecting piety and virtue. He then endeavours to prove that no miracle, in the proper sense of the word, can have been at any time performed; because every thing happens by a necessity of nature, the result of the divine decrees, which are from all eternity necessary themselves. He acknowledges that in the Scriptures, which he professes to admit as true history, miracles are often mentioned; but he says that they were only singular events which the sacred historians imagined to be miraculous. He affirms, in contradiction to the clearest internal evidence, that the Pentateuch and all the other historical books must have been written by one man; and that man, he thinks, was Ezra. The grounds of this opinion are unwortny of the talents of Spinoza. His principal objection to the authenticity of the Pentateuch is, that Moses is made to speak of himself in the third

person; the very same childish objection since repeated by Thomas Paine, whose ignorance may somewhat excuse him, but Spinoza surely could read the Commentaries of Cæsar, in the original, who speaks of himself modestly in the third person throughout all his writings. He also objects to the expression of the Canaanites being then in the land. These senseless cavils, worthy only of one of those modern freethinkers whose learning, in the opinion of bishop Warburton, is not sufficient to carry them even to the confines of rational doubt, we have sufficiently obviated in another place. See SCRIPTURE. In the midst of this dogmatical scepticism, he bears such a testimony to the last chapters of the book of Daniel as we should not, have looked for in the writings either of a Jew or a Deist. After detailing the various hypotheses respecting the author and the intention of the book of Job, in which, he says, Momus is called Satan, he proceeds in these words :-Transeo ad Danielis librum; hic sine dubio ex cap. 8. ipsius Danielis scripta continet. Undenam autem priora septem capita descripta fuerint, nescio,' thus admitting the famous prophecy of the seventy weeks. That so paradoxical a writer, who had been originally a Jew, and was now almost a Deist, should have treated the New Testament with as little ceremony as the Old, will not surprize the intelligent reader. He begins his remarks, however, with affirming that no man can peruse the Christian Scriptures and not acknowledge the apostles to have been prophets; but he thinks that their mode of prophecying was altogether different from that which prevailed under the Mosaic dispensation; and that the gift, whatever it was, forsook them the instant that they left off preaching, as their writings have to him every appearance of human compositions. This distinction between Christian and Jewish prophecy is the more wonderful, that he founds it principally on the dissimilarity of style visible in the writings of the Old and New Testaments. Taking our leave of his Tractatus Theologico Politicus, we shall now give our readers a short account of his Opera Posthuma. These consist of, 1. Ethica, more geometrico demonstrata; 2. Politica; 3. De Emendatione Intellectus; 4. Epistolæ, et ad eas Responsiones; 5. Compendium Grammatices Linguæ Hebrææ. The Ethica are divided into five parts, which treat in order, de Deo; de natura et origine mentis; de origine et natura effectuum; de servitute humana, seu de affectuum viribus; de potentia intellectus, seu de libertate humana. As the au thor professes to tread in the footsteps of the geometers, and to deduce all his conclusions by rigid demonstration from a few self-evident truths, he introduces his work, after the manner of Euclid, with a collection of definitions and axioms. These are couched in terms generally ambiguous. His definition of substance, for instance, is so expressed as to admit of two senses; in one of which it is just, whilst in the other it is the parent of the most impious absurdity. 'Per substantiam intelligo id, quod in se est, et per se concipitur: hoc est id, cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat.' if by this he meant that a substance

is that which we can conceive by itself without attending to any thing else, or thinking of its formation, the definition, we believe, will be admitted by every reflecting mind, as sufficiently distinguishing the thing defined from an attribute, which, he says, is that which we perceive of a substance, and which we certainly cannot conceive as existing by itself. Thus the writer of this article can shut his eyes and contemplate in idea the small quarto volume now before him, without attending to any thing else, or thinking of its paradoxical author, or even of the Great Being who created the matter both of him and of it; but he cannot for an instant contemplate the yellow color of its vellum boards without thinking of triple extension, or, in other words, of body. The book therefore is a substance, because conceivable by itself; the color is an attribute or quality, because it cannot be conceived by itself, but necessarily leads to the conception of something else. But if Spinoza's meaning be, that nothing is a substance but what is conceived as existing from eternity, independent of every thing as a cause, his definition cannot be admitted: for every man conceives that which in himself thinks, and wills, and is conscious, as a substance; at the same time that he has the best evidence possible that he existed not as a conscious thinking, and active being, from eternity. His fourth axiom is thus expressed 'Effectus cognitio a cognitione causa dependet, et eandem involvit;' and his fifth, Quæ nihil commune cum se invicem habent, etiam per se invicem intelligi non possunt, sive conceptus, unius alterius conceptum non involvit.' The former of these propositions, so far from being self-evident, is not even true; and the latter is capable of two senses very different from each other. That every effect proceeds from a cause is indeed an axiom; but surely we may know the effect accurately, though we be ignorant of the particular cause from which it proceeds (see PHILOSOPHY and PHYSICS); nor does the knowledge of the one by any means involve the knowledge of the other. If different things have nothing in common, it is indeed true that the knowledge of one of them will not give us an adequate conception of the other; but it will in many cases compel us to believe that the other exists or has existed. A parcel of gunpowder lying at rest has nothing in common with the velocity of a cannon-ball; yet, when we know that a ball has been driven with velocity from a cannon, we infer with certainty that there has been a parcel of powder at rest in the chamber of that cannon, before it was fired. It is upon such ambiguous definitions and axioms as these that Spinoza has raised his pretended demonstrations, that one substance cannot produce.another; that every substance must necessarily be infinite; that no substance exists or can be conceived besides God; and that extended substance or body is one of the infinite attributes of God. We shall not waste time with a formal confutation of these absurdities. They are sufficiently confuted in other articles of this work; and whoever wishes for a more particular examination of the author's principles, may find it in Dr. Clarke's Demonstration of the Being and

Attributes of God. According to Spinoza bodies are either attributes or affections of Goa; and, as he says there is but one extended substance, he affirms that substance to be indivisible. He attempts to prove that God is an extended as well as a thinking substance; that as a thinking substance he is the cause of the idea of a circle, and as an extended substance of the circle itself; that the minds of men are not substances, but certain modifications of the divine attributes. And that thinking and extended substances are in reality but one and the same substance, which is sometimes comprehended under one attribute of the Deity, and sometimes under another. If this impious jargon be not Atheism, or as it has been sometimes called Pantheism, we know not what it is. According to Spinoza, there is but one substance, which is extended, infinite, and indivisible. That substance indeed he calls God; but he labors to prove that it is corporeal; that there is no difference between mind and matter; that both are attributes of the Deity variously considered; that the human soul is a part of the intellect of God; that the same soul is nothing but the idea of the human body; that this idea of the body, and the body itself, are one and the same thing; that God could not exist, or be conceived, were the visible universe annihilated; and therefore that the visible universe is either the one substance, or at least an essential attribute or modification of that substance. According to him, nothing but the prejudices of education could have led men to fancy that there is any real distinction between good and evil, merit and demerit, praise and reproach, order and confusion; that eyes were given that the owners might see; that the sun was formed to give light, &c. If this be true, it is impossible to discover wisdom in the operations of his one substance; since it is the very characteristic of folly to act without any end in view. His Compendium Grammatices Linguæ Hebrææ, though left imperfect, appears to have so much merit, that it is to be wished he had fulfilled his intention of writing a philosophical grammar of that language, instead of wasting his time on abstruse speculations, which, though they seem not to have been injurious to his own virtue, are certainly not calculated to promote the virtue of others, or to increase the sum of human happiness.

SPINOZISM, the opinions and doctrines of Spinoza. See the last article.

SPINTHERE. Color greenish-gray. In small oblique double four-sided pyramids. It does not scratch glass. It occurs in the department of Isere in France, incrusting calcareous spar crystals. It is believed to be a variety of sphene.

SPINTURNIX, in fabulous history, a bird, or rather a quadruped with wings, which was said sometimes to attend the sacrifices, and carry away a live coal from the altar; which was reckoned an omen of ill luck.-Pliny. It would have been more natural for such a monster to have carried off the sacrifice.

SPIRA (Francis), an eminent Italian lawyer, who flourished with great reputation in the beginning of the sixteenth century, at Citadella in the Venetian States. He had imbibed the prin